


You've Got a Face for Radio

by ckret2



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: (all these warnings are pretty mild. this ain't a heavy fic.), Aromantic, Aromantic Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Aromantic Asexual Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Asexual Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Asexuality, Backstory, Bad Jokes, Bad Puns, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Acephobia, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, also vague hints of unexamined gender stuff, briefly featuring Angel Dust and Lucifer, even more briefly featuring the rest of the hotel crew and a few throwaway OCs, this is a character study of ace/aro Alastor and his relationship w/ his orientation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:07:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25511092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: The closest Alastor's ever gotten to romance comes in the form of—in order of increasing hilariousness—a couple of botched youthful attempts at kissing, cheap mass-produced smut comics, and the wildly entertaining tales of other people's sordid affairs.He's never wanted sex. He's never wanted love. He's never seen a problem with this.It's taken about a century, but he's pleasantly surprised to discover that the rest of the world is finally starting to catch up with his perspective.More than anything else, he’s pleased that these new modern attitudes have given him extra opportunities for bad puns.
Comments: 39
Kudos: 302





	You've Got a Face for Radio

**Author's Note:**

> Check out this dumb picture I made!  
>   
> I wrote this fic for two reasons. The first is because Ace/Aro Alastor Means A Lot To Me As An Ace/Aro, and I went and wrote a whole essay about that in the notes here before going "wait that's too long" so I [moved it to a post on tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/624640897202733056/this-essay-was-originally-gonna-be-in-the-intro) instead lmao.
> 
> But the _second_ reason is because I'm participating in the [Hazbin Hotel Secret Sinner](https://twitter.com/MerlinIsland/status/1276398373071843328) gift-giving event and I got assigned [@ValeskaLoki](https://twitter.com/ValeskaLoki), who also is a big Alastor fan, also is ace/aro, and also has liked fanart celebrating Alastor's ace/aro-ness, so I finally got the motivation to finish this fic of Alastor bumbling his way through figuring out his orientation. I hope you like long-winded character studies lol.

"Lucifer! The morning star himself! What. An. Honor." Alastor flung his arms wide before bowing theatrically. The canned applause of a studio audience, welcoming a guest to the show, echoed up the crooked brick walls. "What brings you to this dark, narrow alley so late at night?"

"I noticed you passing through and thought it high time I make your acquaintance." In the dark, Lucifer nearly glowed. His smile was small, but, Alastor noted, quite securely fixed in place. An impeccably dressed demon. Or whatever he was. Angel, fallen variety? Lucifer went on, "I caught your big broadcast, you know." (Who _hadn't_?) "It's rare we get a human who really knows how to _raise Hell._ "

Lucifer earned an appreciative laugh from the audience. Alastor's eyes widened. "Oh! Oh, that was a groaner! Someone told you about my sense of humor."

Lucifer's small smile stretched wider, exposing yellowed ivory fangs. "I did my research on you." Something in his eyes shifted, and Alastor sensed they were moving past the introductory pleasantries and on to whatever Lucifer had actually come to Alastor to say. "It turned up some very interesting things about you—I'm curious about my place on your little _list_." Something that looked like a rosy pink snake coiled and slithered around the brim of Lucifer's hat. A snake and an apple. How fitting.

Did Alastor have a list he didn't know about? Maybe the high-ranked demons he'd already brought down, and those he hadn't yet touched? Was Lucifer sizing up the competition? "Well! Rest assured, you're not one of my top priorities. Got to take out the small fry first, you know. Perhaps I'll work my way to the top of the hill as I work my way to the bottom of the list."

Not that Alastor really _had_ a "list." He had enjoyed flexing his newfound powers upon his first arrival in Hell—and flexing them against the so-called "overlords" had proved the best test for his capabilities—but now that he'd been down here a few months, he found the thought of joining the rat race of sinners squabbling for a place in Hell's hierarchy to be tedious. He'd never been interested in politics. He didn't think he'd be going about challenging anybody for the throne.

But he thought that _Lucifer_ thought he planned to do that, and Alastor wouldn't be much of an entertainer if he couldn't play to his audience's expectations, now would he?

"And I look forward to your challenge!" Lucifer said lightly. "But no, I meant your other list."

Did Alastor have _another_ list he didn't know about? He leaned forward curiously, all ears.

Lucifer's eyes slid half shut, showing bruise purple eyelids. "You've been in Hell some time now. Is it safe to say you're having a better time here than you would upstairs?"

Alastor's smile froze in place. Ah. _That_ list.

Once, while he'd been alive, he'd been drawn into a conversation with a couple of fellows who had insisted that _everyone_ (or at least every man—he didn't know if they'd ever considered the ladies' perspectives) had a _list._ A list of the dames they'd absolutely bed—"or gents, if your tastes run that way"—no questions asked, damn the consequences, if ever the opportunity arose. They'd been comparing their top choices, urged Alastor to share his, _assured_ him that it was _quite impossible_ he had none, and insisted he stop holding out.

After that conversation, he'd put some thought into it and come up with a list of people that, he supposed, he'd have to be stupid not to go to bed with if they flung themselves at him. For starters, anyone who seemed particularly inclined to make his life hell if he said no but whom he didn't think he could get away with simply killing. Like Al Capone, surrounded by bodyguards, on a day Alastor was caught unarmed. Same went for anyone with more than a million dollars to their name, for mostly the same reasons—too many benefits to saying yes and too many risks to saying no. If Blanche Calloway asked, he'd probably feel obligated to her out of gratitude. And maybe George Gershwin specifically for _Rhapsody in Blue._ He owed them both some sort of abstract favor in exchange for their fine work, and if that was the form they wanted it to take, well, _maybe_...

But that was the list he'd come up with later. With an audience pressing him for his "list" as he considered the question for the first time in his life, his ideas had been far more abstract. Rummaging through his mind for a potential sexual partner, he'd considered suggesting a mermaid or gorgon or some such—if nothing else, he'd win major bragging rights as the first human confirmed to have performed said act with said creature—and he'd considered asking whether either of the gentlemen in front of him were familiar with the odd literature of one H.P. Lovecraft; and what he'd finally said, dismissively, was: "Top choice is either God or the Devil, depending on which one offers to show me a better time."

And here was the devil right in front of him, his grin widening as Alastor's eyes did.

Alastor was struck with two thoughts almost simultaneously: the first was to wonder whether Lucifer was making those "bedroom eyes" he'd heard about but never quite been able to properly imagine; and the other was that Lucifer had followed him into a dark, narrow alleyway, hadn't he, and everyone knows what happens to people who are followed into dark, narrow alleyways.

Besides murders. And muggings.

From what Alastor had learned of Lucifer in the papers and through gossip about town, Lucifer seemed classier than that. But he _was_ the ruler of Hell; Alastor would be a fool to give his virtue _too_ much credit. And anyway, what did Alastor really know about the powerful carnal urges that drove other people? Only that he'd heard of _so_ many people doing things they knew damn well they shouldn't have that he was beginning to wonder whether "I just couldn't help myself" wasn't actually an excuse for stupidity, but indeed an accurate description of a complete loss of self-control he'd simply never experienced.

He hadn't been planning to fight Lucifer quite just yet, but if he had to, he felt he had one in three odds. And so, just in case this was headed that way—he got wary, he got alert, and he got friendlier.

"My, my! It seems nothing gets by you," Alastor said. "But I'm afraid I have to be the bearer of bad news: I only said that because I didn't think a mere little mortal like me was ever going to meet either one of you! Terribly sorry to disappoint." But not really. Alastor braced himself for any kind of reaction.

Lucifer's apparent good cheer didn't waver. "No disappointment here. Actually, I brought it up for the same reason you gave that answer: because I knew it was never going to happen." His smile twisted into a thin smirk. "And maybe I wanted to worry you."

Wanted to remind the Radio Demon that he was someone _worth_ being worried about, no doubt. Alastor seethed internally. Oh, Lucifer was a bit of a bastard, wasn't he? Alastor thought he could get to like him—later, once he saw Lucifer giving that treatment to someone else. He wasn't keen on being on the receiving end of it.

Lucifer went on, "Not that you don't cut a handsome figure," (and Alastor's mind screeched to a halt again, as it always tended to do when he was reminded that, yes, he _did_ possess a perceptible corporeal form which other people had the capacity to find attractive) "but I _am_ married, and quite satisfied with the company in my own bed."

Something inside Alastor automatically flinched back at this information. It must have been visible on his face somehow, because Lucifer said, "You're surprised? I'm sure you've been here long enough to hear about my wife Lilith?"

"Of course! I hear she's twice the Queen of Hell that Persephone could ever hope to be, and not just because she doesn't take summers off." The invisible studio audience chuckled politely. "I'm just—" he made a split second decision to be dishonest about his reaction, "—surprised that _the_ Lucifer is so _faithful._ Isn't there a Commandment about that you could be breaking?"

Lucifer laughed. "Only amateurs treat sins like a bingo card to be filled! The _professionals_ figure out where their tastes lie and hone those talents. You figured _that_ out long before you got here, didn't you?"

"I could never be accused of not knowing my own tastes." This time, he decided to be a little less dishonest about his reaction. "Then, if not _unfaithful_ —my next expectation was that you wouldn't have any interest in having company in bed at all. I would have expected you, of all entities, to be..." He gestured vaguely. "Above it all."

Lucifer glanced up in the vague direction of the Heaven moon. "If you want 'above it all,' you came to the wrong neighborhood."

"You know what I mean."

Lucifer chuckled. "You _would_ think that, wouldn't you?" (Alastor decided to reserve judgment on whether he ought to feel offended.) "I bet that's what you expected when you got here, wasn't it? That once everyone was free of their flesh, they'd also be free of their fleshly desires? Or that beings who have never been mere mortals—never needed to reproduce just to live—would never feel lust, either?"

Alastor stared at Lucifer, brows raised, trying not to look surprised at having his exact thoughts read off to him. My. Was that the perceptiveness of a professional manipulator who'd honed his talents for millennia, or were the upper echelons of the universe's management omniscient after all? "Something along those lines."

"You enjoy cooking, don't you?"

Alastor mused that Lucifer really _had_ done his research. "Sure I do. Why?"

"Were you surprised when you found out demons eat?"

"I suppose I wasn't." Although the moment he said it, he realized that he _should_ have been surprised. Surely the immortal and the already-dead didn't need food?

Lucifer nodded. "That's because hunger makes sense to you."

And therefore, if he hadn't expected to find lust in Hell, that meant it _didn't_ make sense to Alastor. This time he was certain he ought to be insulted. He raised his chin defiantly. "What can I say? Guilty as charged."

Lucifer smiled thinly. "Well, I only came by to rattle you a bit! I won't keep you. Pleasure to meet you, Radio Demon." He tipped his hat. "I hope you have fun down here in my little magic kingdom. Probably not in the brothels, but I think we've got a few other places down here that are better suited to your tastes."

They certainly did; but Alastor disliked that Lucifer had so easily read him. "Oh, don't count me out of the brothels just yet."

Lucifer raised his brows in surprise.

"You ever make it down to Storyville before the reformers shut it down?" Alastor asked. "You'd find the best pianists in New Orleans playing in the brothel lobbies."

Lucifer laughed loudly enough that Alastor thought he'd actually managed to surprise him. "Of course! Of course. You won't be disappointed by our music scene, I promise you that."

"I'm sure I won't." Alastor had never heard a genre get called "the devil's music" if it _wasn't_ spectacular.

He nodded a polite farewell and watched until Lucifer had left. Alastor could have gone about his life quite happily without that encounter.

He continued on his way, feeling uneasily conscious of the surface of his own skin.

###

During his mortal life, Alastor had received a grand total of two kisses from anyone who wasn't a blood relative.

The first was from a girl he had been flirting with when they'd been fourteen or fifteen years old—not for any love of her, but because he was intrigued by the thought of flirtation. It amused him that at his age flirting seemed to be paradoxically forbidden and encouraged, both shocking and expected. He'd thought he ought to practice at it.

He'd been on two-week trip and wouldn't have to worry about seeing his practice partner again, and he'd chosen her at a party because she was the most enthusiastic dancer in the room and he'd liked how her short curly hair floated around her head. He'd dropped to one knee with a silly self-deprecating smile, one hand to his chest and one hand lightly holding her hand, to ask her if she'd dance with him as though he were asking her to marry him. She'd said yes, giggling at his theatrics.

He'd wondered later if she'd understood they were playing a game together.

A week later they had been sitting together, briefly unsupervised, and he'd thought it a fine opportunity to attempt nuzzling her cheek and see how she took it. She'd kissed his cheek, he'd copied her motion, trying to match her pressure and her pace, where she kissed and how long she kissed. As her hand had brushed over his side, his ribs had trembled under her hand as he tried to fight back his ticklishness. He'd expected her to reach his lips, but had expected the first kiss to be a bit softer.

He had not expected her tongue.

It had been soft but not at all cooperatively yielding, wriggling like a live creature, intruding between his teeth like a hostile invader hoping to conquer the native tongue and set up a colony in its home. He'd gagged. He'd pulled back with a panicked smile and quickly apologized for his overactive gag reflex, hoping she'd take the hint. She'd accepted his apology by leaning forward and sticking her tongue in his mouth again. He'd tensed his shoulders so he wouldn't shudder the next time he gagged and tried to focus on pushing her tongue back into the mouth where it belonged. It had all been a blur from there, but he was fairly certain his tongue hadn't made it as far as his own lips.

The whole sordid affair lasted under a minute. Alastor had been relieved when one of his mother's friends had caught them and ran him away from the girl.

For the next year, he thought of that girl any time he looked at raw salmon.

He'd had his second kiss almost a decade later, in a speakeasy where he liked to listen to the music and found himself vaguely reassured for reasons he couldn't specify by the fact that at this table one man put his hand on another man's thigh while at that table two women held hands as they looked into each other's eyes, and the baritone singer on stage wore a dress. Sitting alone contentedly listening to the music, he'd felt insulated from the club while the club insulated him from the world outside.

A man had seen him sitting by himself, thought his isolation was an invitation, and asked him to dance. He'd thought to himself, _why the hell not?_ and taken to the dance floor. He hadn't danced with a man before. He thought he ought to try just about everything once, just to say he had.

He'd been too aware of the fingertips pressed to his waist, he tensed up every time his dance partner's fingers twitched and hoped that that would be the last time they moved until the end of the song, so he could get used to this touch and let it fade into the background like the pull of his suspenders on his shoulders. He'd known what to expect when the man had taken his hand after a couple of dances and led him off toward the dark hall that led to the kitchen. He'd let himself be led. _Why the hell not?_ He hadn't been kissed by a man before. He'd thought he ought to do it at least once, just to see how it compared to being kissed by a girl.

His childhood practice had paid off. This time, he'd known to expect tongue, and he'd known to tense his body from diaphragm to hips so it wouldn't show when he gagged. He'd felt the man's stubble, which somehow he hadn't expected.

He'd been exhilarated at his own boldness, at the brashness of allowing this new experience to seize him. Now he could say he'd done it and would never need to do it again.

The man had told him his kissing was a five out of ten, which had startled him so much—he hadn't expected to be scored—that he'd joked he clearly needed more practice, and then immediately regretted it. It had taken Alastor three tries to brush off the man's efforts to find out how often he came by and what he was doing next weekend.

Later, Alastor had jovially joked to a confidant that he'd felt like he'd lost about a fourth of his virginity to his dance partner's lips and hands. He'd pondered the encounter over the next couple of days, deciding whether he felt like he'd been taken advantage of; and then decided he didn't, since he'd gone to the dance floor voluntarily, without reluctance, and knowing exactly what would happen. He hadn't enjoyed it, but he'd agreed to it, and he'd done it to satisfy a personal urge separate from enjoyment.

By the time he died, he'd mentally worked out that he didn't have an overactive gag reflex; he just didn't want to be kissed. He wasn't unusually ticklish; he just didn't want to be touched. He never kissed again. He went to the grave with the remaining three-fourths of his virginity intact, and when he thought back on his life, figured that was a far more entertaining statistic than having died with 100% of it would have been, but he was glad he hadn't lost any more than that.

It wasn't until he'd been dead several times longer than he'd been alive that he was offered his first blowjob.

By that time, he had decided that trying everything once was all well and good, but there was no point in trying out anything he already knew he wouldn't enjoy.

###

Charlie had suggested a free DVD lending library in the lobby for guests, so that as they worked toward redemption it could help them pass the time they'd usually be spending committing more sins.

Angel Dust had come to the lobby with a long wire basket filled with films he'd starred in.

Alastor, who thought there was no entertainment in watching the damned try and fail to redeem themselves if they didn't make some actual progress before backsliding, had said they would _not_ put DVDs in the lobby with overtly pornographic images on every cover.

Angel had agreed, surprisingly readily— _suspiciously_ readily—and then asked if Alastor would like to helpfully point out which of the DVDs had _un_ overtly pornographic images on the covers.

Alastor took it as a challenge.

And that was how they'd ended up sitting at a table across from each other near the currently-closed bar, Alastor carefully scrutinizing each and every DVD cover and asking the occasional question, and Angel grinning like this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.

"Really? _No_ women at all?" Alastor gingerly flicked each DVD box by the corner to turn them over as he went through the basket. (His tentative touch was performative; he had no discomfort in touching the plastic boxes, regardless of how filthy the pictures on the cover were. In fact, since his gaze usually slid past the ads in adult video stores' windows and posters on adult movie theaters' walls, he was mildly curious about the glossy covers with their absurdly edited porn actors. However, with _some_ people, he found that anything but the most overt displays of disinterest were willfully misinterpreted as "suppressed interest that just needs a bit of coaxing." He had the sneaking suspicion Angel was one of those people.)

"What, has nobody told you what 'gay' means? Besides an insult the dead rednecks shout at guys with an ounce of fashion sense." Angel rolled his eyes. "You only died, what, a decade before me? What insults were they using back then? 'Fairy'? Do ya at least know what 'homosexual' means."

Alastor impatiently waved off Angel's chatter. "I'm well aware of all of the above terms, thank you." One of the records he'd played on his own station had been "Let's All Be Fairies." He'd been fond of that one, it was bubbly. It didn't come out long before he died. "That's only relevant to your private life, though! This—" he tapped a glove nail on the basket, prompting a burst of feedback and static, "this is show business. You're an actor playing a role. You never co-star with ladies?"

Angel Dust screwed up his face. "Uh. No."

" _Huh_." You learn something new every day. Alastor pulled out a DVD with four actors standing in front of a moving truck. They were wearing 2.5 shirts and all of them were clothed from the waist down. It was progress. He took out that DVD and set it in their very small stack of acceptable DVDs. "Then I suppose you only take on male customers, too."

"Unless a broad's willing to pay extra," Angel said, shrugging. "I'd do it on film for extra, too, but there's no market for payin' a gay guy extra to screw a chick when they could just have a straight guy do it."

"Huh. I suppose it _would_ be easier to hire someone for whom the role comes naturally."

Angel gave Alastor a long, calculating look, like he was trying to figure out where he was coming from. Alastor flipped several more DVDs while waiting for Angel to figure it out. At last Angel said, "So—okay, now you've made it so I've gotta ask. You were assuming that I _would_ co-star with a girl just because it's for a film?"

Alastor shrugged. "Yes."

"So were you assuming straight guys are gonna star in gay porn, too?"

"Of course! If they're committed to the acting profession, why shouldn't they?" He paused on another cover—everyone was nude, but anything explicit was hidden by the title or clever leg placement, and it had an aesthetic closer to a particularly sensual '30s pulp romance rather than a cheap centerfold. He tentatively took that one out and put it in a stack by itself: to be decided later. "Of course, given what you've already said about requiring extra pay, I'm sure the... _tedious_ heterosexual defensiveness so many men suffer from won't let some porn stars take gay roles—but I wouldn't call that _commitment to the acting profession_ , would you?"

Angel looked relieved by the reply, and Alastor idly wondered what alternative he'd feared. "Huh. Well, as it turns out, gay-for-pay is this whole genre, so _somebody's_ committed to the acting profession."

Alastor's invisible audience applauded and he played back a staticky recording of a voice saying, "I'd like to thank the _Academy—_ "

"Shut up," Angel said. "But still—most guys aren't willing and able to fuck someone with a set of junk they're not into. Even for the," finger quotes, "'acting profession.' Or an assload of money, either. I know some guys that've played the gay half in gay-for-pay films, they say some of the breeders they bring in take one look at a dick and bolt for the door."

"Do tell!" Alastor stopped on another DVD. He'd seen this word about half a dozen times now. "What's a 'twink'?"

"Ugh, some marketing term they started slapping on everything in the 80's. Skinny, pretty, and young-but-not-illegal-looking. And _usually_ hairless, but, well." Angel gestured at his fluffy pink cleavage.

"Hm." Alastor flipped by it.

Angel leaned halfway across the table toward Alastor, a glint in his eye that Alastor did not trust in the slightest. "Y'know, _most_ people don't assume the average guy's willing to fuck someone they aren't attracted to on camera. Kinda got me curious about _you_ , if you're assuming everyone else is like that." Angel gave Alastor a pointed look, eyebrows raised.

Alastor raised his eyebrows just as high but didn't otherwise allow his expression to twitch. "Is that so?"

An amused smirk tugged at the corner of Angel's mouth, exposing a gold tooth. "Most guys won't so much as _kiss_ something they don't wanna stick their dicks in. You saying you would as long as you were just 'performing a role'?"

Alastor thought of tensing his entire abdomen so his dance partner wouldn't notice Alastor was gagging on his partner's tongue. "If I'd decided to star in adult pictures, certainly! But need I point out that I'm _not_ the one who chose a career path that involves professional fornication?"

Angel sat back. "Okay, fair."

Alastor reached the last DVD in the basket, decided to lower his standards this go around, and flipped back to the front to start over. He found himself studying the actors' faces. Did they look like they were having fun? Not really, not to him. They looked like they were posing, even when, for instance, one of them had—completely randomly-chosen example—a dick visibly bulging in his throat. But what did he know, really.

He could feel Angel's eyes burning into him while Angel waited for further elaboration. Alastor decided to humor him. "I suppose it's because I tend to assume _all_ sex is fundamentally performative, secondarily pleasurable. It would be for me." It was difficult to get into other people's heads when he had no personal basis with which to guess what was going on in their minds. This had turned out to be a far more educational conversation than he'd expected. "But then, I _am_ a performer at heart—albeit in a different medium."

"Wait," Angel said. "Hold on. 'It _would be_ ' for you? As in, hypothetically? As in you don't know?"

Alastor nodded politely to each question. He pulled out a DVD featuring Angel in a nice suit to examine it closer, saw the rope of mid-ejaculated semen being used to underline the title, remembered why this one hadn't made the first pass, and put it back.

"As in, you've never screwed before? You mean you're a fuckin' _virgin?_ "

"Isn't that an oxymoron?" The studio audience tittered.

"Shove it. Are you _seriously_ a virgin? In _Hell?_ A virgin in Hell. You've been here, what, over eighty years now? We've got more whorehouses than Starbucks, it's not like you don't have opportunities."

"By my reckoning, I was about three-fourths of a virgin when I got here, and that hasn't changed since."

A baffled smile stretched across Angel's face, as if he was exactly as excited as he was confused to be the recipient of this confession. (Not that Alastor considered it much of a confession—it wasn't a secret, it just rarely came up in conversation.) He visibly warred with himself over whether to ask the obvious question, then finally said, "I think you can round up on virginity."

"Good to know."

###

He'd practiced at having crushes when he was a child.

No one had told him he needed to practice. Perhaps on some level, even when he was still too young for love, he'd sense that the unlit torch in his heart that was supposed to someday ignite with infatuation was made out of marble instead of wood; perhaps he'd known that attraction would never come naturally to him, assumed it didn't come naturally to others either, and concluded it was a skill to be practiced, just like proper diction or piano playing.

Or perhaps he had practiced it because, as a child, it had seemed exciting. The thought of love entertained him when he was young—the drama of it all, the endless longing, the sleepless nights, the noble sacrifices. Fantastic tragedies. He'd practiced attraction like an amateur actor practicing Romeo's lines, amused by his own performance but not feeling it.

He'd decided at about ten to have a crush on a girl—he'd considered the children about his age in class and picked the prettiest one—but, not knowing what he was supposed to do besides tell her (which seemed embarrassing, considering that he hardly ever spoke to her and didn't yet know what he was doing) or secretly give her gifts (which took resources a ten-year-old didn't have), he'd elected to follow her from an unobtrusive distance when he crossed paths with her outside of school—until she turned around and told him to stop, at which point he did, deciding that hadn't been much fun after all.

The next year, he'd decided to have another crush on a girl he knew better (sans the following), decided after a couple of months that it was probably time to confess, wasn't it? and left an anonymous note on her desk—and promptly lost interest again.

After a few days play-romancing the girl who'd given him his first kiss, he'd considered the possibility that he was one of those people who fell in love with their own sex. He knew he'd completely failed to develop any sort of interest in the opposite sex, and nearly every figure that had ever impressed him had been a man, so that had to be it, didn't it?

For the better part of half a year he managed to maintain a silent charade of having a crush on a boy his age he sometimes saw around the neighborhood, which mainly consisted of Alastor glancing sideways at the boy when he wasn't paying attention and trying to impress upon himself the significance of the boy's aesthetically attractive face. A few years later, Alastor let another man give him his second kiss. And then nothing more.

By that time, Alastor was sure enough of what was inside himself to have realized that not only was he never going to feel anything, but also he would be supremely annoyed by the intrusion upon his independence if he _did_.

###

In the fifties, Alastor participated in a study.

Alastor liked how the two college students manning the folding table in the hall looked at him like they were about to faint. They appeared to be about twenty years old and were dressed like recent arrivals, which meant that they may well have not even been born yet when Alastor died. He was thrilled he could still terrify the modern youths.

His smile stretching wider, he said, "Hello!"

One of the kids almost fell out of his folding chair; the legs rattled on the tile floor. The other flinched and said, "H-hi. How can we, uh—help you, sir?"

"I thought _I_ was here to help _you!_ " With a flourish, Alastor held out a flyer he'd stolen:

 _Volunteers needed for psychological study on sexual preferences. NO SEX ACTS OR PORNOGRAPHY WILL BE INVOLVED!_ (That part had been hastily added later in a different handwriting.) _Brief questionnaire, 15-20 minutes. Participants will be given pizza._

Alastor glanced around. "Where's the pizza?"

Both students blanched. The second one said weakly, "We, uh, we, uh, we... ran out."

Alastor shrugged. "No matter!" He dropped the flyer in the second student's lap. "I'll participate anyway. I'm a big fan of psychology! Fascinating stuff, trying to figure out the mind—I always _do_ wonder what's going to be found in mine." He chuckled. "So! Where do I go?"

They both pointed to a classroom door just down the hall.

Alastor opened the door. "Good after—"

The student inside shrieked and chucked a pile of papers at Alastor's face. They fluttered harmlessly to the ground.

That was never going to get old.

Once Alastor had made himself comfortable and the student had managed to collect himself, Alastor coaxed out of him an explanation for the questionnaire's purpose:

"We're replicating a study done in the living world to measure the population's overall balance of heterosexuality and homosexuality. We've got a questionnaire that will put participants on a scale from zero to six, with a score of threerepresenting equal amounts of heterosexual and homosexual behavior and thoughts." The student flinched back from Alastor even though Alastor hadn't done anything—probably afraid the big bad Radio Demon would be offended by the merest suggestion that he might not be completely heterosexual (since, Alastor had noticed, so many _other_ people tended to be offended). The student said, "I-it's completely voluntary, of course! And it's—not to suggest that you are—or, or _aren't_ —"

"But I might be!" Alastor said, who was far less irritated by the suggestion that his preferences may-or-may-not-be than he was by the suggestion that his ego was too fragile to take the suggestion. In fact, he'd _love_ to find out where in the world trained psychologists would place him along a scale like that. "Go on, then. If the study's already been done, why are you replicating it?"

The student hesitated, then cleared his throat and continued. "The purpose of _this_ study is to compare the control population—the living world—to the population in Hell. To see if there's a correlation between any sexual preferences and a tendency toward damnation."

Alastor thought he smelled an agenda behind this study. And he could already see a problem with the methodology—wouldn't the already-damned be more inclined to be honest about the urges and desires they would have been condemned for in life? A man who in life had been married and would vehemently declare he'd only ever had eyes for the ladies might in death be more willing to confess an equal taste for gentlemen. But it wasn't Alastor's study. He was here to have fun, what did he care about their skewed results? "Find any notable differences yet?"

The student shifted uncomfortably. "Well," he said. "Actually. We can't agree on what we remember the statistical breakdown from the living world was. So we're just gonna... record the numbers and wait for somebody who remembers the statistics from the original study to die."

Alastor held back a derisive laugh, but his studio audience didn't. "I'm sure it will happen eventually."

The student handed Alastor a clipboard, a true/false questionnaire, a piece of notebook paper he could write his answers on, and a pen.

And then Alastor grappled with the questions.

Some were easy enough—"My decision on whether to participate in an orgy would have nothing to do with the gender composition of its participants" got a big fat "true," even if probably not for the reason that the questionnaire writer had intended. "Under the right conditions, I could be sexually attracted to anyone" also got an quick "false."

Some, however, were trickier.

After several seconds of tapping the butt of his pen on the paper, Alastor paused the game show music he'd been idly playing in the background and said, "Question."

"Yes?" The student glanced over attentively.

"This one here says 'I'm repelled by the idea of having sex with another man,'" Alastor said, "And I _am_ , but—"

"Then put 'true,'" the student said.

Alastor stared silently at the student for several seconds. "Are you done interrupting me?"

The student shrank down. "Yes, sir."

" _But_ ," Alastor continued, "I'm equally repulsed by the idea of having sex with a woman. And I don't see a question about that. So won't putting 'true' put a point toward heterosexuality that shouldn't be there? Is that how this works?"

The student sat forward and looked at Alastor, as if Alastor had said something a lot more interesting than he thought he had. But then the student simply said, "The last two questions override all the others, don't worry about it too hard."

Alastor glanced at the bottom of the list—"I've never felt sexual desire" and "I don't have any interest in having sex with anybody"—and quickly marked both "true."

Then glanced at the next question up—what in the world did whether or not he was sexually submissive have to do with who he was attracted to?—reminded himself that the last two questions were going to override it anyway, decided he couldn't be sexually submissive if he wasn't sexually _anything_ , and marked it "false" as well.

Alastor filled out the remaining questions, handed over his clipboard, and waited a moment while the student compared Alastor's answers to a rubric. "So?" Alastor prompted. "Give me the good news! How did I score?"

"You're an X."

Alastor paused. He'd thought this was a numerical scale. "X as in the Roman numeral for ten?" Was that completely homosexual or completely heterosexual?

"X as in the letter. You're outside the scale," the student said. "It's for people who don't feel any desire at all."

"Well! There's enough of us running around to warrant our own category?"

"I guess so." The student shrugged.

"What percentage of the population, if you had to guess?" Alastor's gaze drifted to the pile of completed questionnaires stacked on a desk behind the student.

The student followed his gaze, then subtly scooted in front of the desk with the papers. "That's classified information until we finish the study."

" _Is_ it, now."

There was a long moment of silence as Alastor contemplated the wisdom of simply stealing the studies and as the student grew visibly nervous.

Finally, deciding he'd rather not mess up their study because he was curious to hear the full results, Alastor got to his feet and said, "Then I'll look forward to seeing it published!"

The student slouched in relief.

When Alastor left the classroom, he found the two students outside had had a fresh pizza delivered. Smart kids.

It was several years before, by chance, Alastor heard the study being discussed on public radio. It only mentioned category X in passing, and then only as if they were part of that dismissible sliver of any survey that answers with "none of the above."

Alastor was disappointed, but he told himself there was probably very little to say about the desires of somebody who had none.

###

By the time of his death, Alastor had been on the receiving end of six confessions of attraction (two by women, three by men, and one by unsigned letter), suspected another two women who laughed a little too animatedly at his terrible jokes, and wouldn't be surprised if there were more whom he didn't know about. Not because he thought he was the kind of guy everyone ought to pine for, but because he was apparently the kind of guy that _at least six_ people pined for, and he thought the odds were pretty low that the _only_ people who fell for him were the ones who had the courage to tell him so.

It was a wildly disconcerting thought.

He was the subject. He was the viewpoint. He was the perspective through which all the world was filtered, the searchlight that dissolved all before him into dust that could be sucked into his microphone and broadcast to the world—as a performance, as a song, as as a story, as a monologue, as a joke. Invisible. Intangible. Just a voice in a box. The radio host that looked around himself and reported on the news.

He was most himself when he was sitting elbows on a desk, face near a microphone, grinning to himself as he gave a speech that would only be heard miles away, knowing somewhere an unknown audience of unknown numbers was eagerly consuming his words. He was most himself when he lost all awareness of his physical form. His identity began where his lips ended, pouring forth words.

Voices weren't supposed to be observed. And that was what _being desired_ was. It meant that someone had gazed upon him and, in doing so, transformed him from a narrator into a character, from the subject of the sentence into the object. The object of desire. The passive recipient of someone else's emotions. It anchored him inside his body.

He hated to be anchored in his body.

###

"So when I was younger," Alastor said into his microphone, beaming out from under the spotlight at the Happy Hotel's ballroom, "I used to be into musical theater."

There was polite applause and a couple of whistles. The ballroom's usually-cleared floor was currently full of tables and chairs like a proper comedy club, and its lights were dim except for the spotlight on Alastor's low stage.

"I—Thank you! You can see how well _that_ career went, here I am doing charity comedy at a hotel." He rolled his eyes and waved off the smattering of sympathetic laughs. "Oh, stop. So, I was trying out for _Pirates Of Penzance_ , I was performing 'Modern Major General,' I was really killing it up there—no, seriously—I found my competition for the role backstage, grabbed some rope, and..." He pantomimed garroting a man and played a sound effect of strangled gasping, to hoots of laughter from the audience. "Ah, this is why I love performing in Hell. That one always _slays_." He winked as the laughter redoubled.

"So anyway, I sing my bit—'I am the very model of a modern Major-General,' ya-di-da—you can stop whistling, that's all you're getting—and the director sits forward and gives me the best advice of my young acting career. He says, 'Al, what are you doing trying out for musicals? You're a man made for the real world. You should be a reporter. You should be in the news.' I say, 'Do you really think so, sir?' And he says, 'Sure! You've only been singing on my stage a minute, and I can tell: you've got a face for radio and a voice for newspaper."

He paused, lowering his microphone and grinning his cheekiest fangiest grin as the audience cracked up.

Once the noise had died down, he raised his microphone again and continued. "So that night I think it over, and—I know what you're all thinking, 'This is when the Radio Demon went into radio, right?' But no. Once I'd finished licking my wounds—you know, poured out my sorrows to a bartender that didn't ask, downed a bottle of whiskey that tasted like toilet cleaner—Prohibition, see—I thought it over. And I realized that director might have been on to something. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of seeing my name on the front page of the paper." He paused. "So I became a serial killer."

To roaring laughter and applause, he held out his microphone, placed his free hand to his chest, closed his eyes, and bowed.

"What the fuck is going on in here?"

Alastor looked up, eyes opening wide. "Why, it's Husk! So good of you to join us!"

Husk stoically ignored the polite applause. He stood in the back of the ballroom-turned-comedy-club, half lit by the hallway light coming through the open door. "Just... _what_ are you doing?"

"Why..." Alastor gestured out at the room with his microphone cane. "Entertaining, of course!"

Husk exaggeratedly looked back and forth at all the empty tables. "You're the only one in here."

"Of course! Who did you think I was entertaining?" The studio audience laughed again.

Husk rolled his eyes. "Okay. You and your imaginary friends have fun. Just put my tables back when you're finished playing make believe." He turned to go.

The door slammed shut in front of Husk.

"Uh..."

"Oh, Husk," Alastor called, once more speaking into his microphone. "Knock, knock."

Husk glared back over his shoulder at Alastor. "I'm not gonna fuckin'—"

"Knock, _knock_."

Husk rolled his eyes and sighed heavily, but said, "Who's there?" He jumped as two heavy thuds rattled the door.

Alastor's smile slowly spread wider, eyes glowing. "Why don't you open up and see?"

Husk gave Alastor the most resentful look he'd ever seen.

Shows were always more fun with a little audience participation.

###

 _You've got a face for radio_.

Alastor had always liked that joke. He'd described himself like that from time to time when he'd been a radio host. Sometimes he'd meet members of his audience in person and they'd be surprised to find he was—well, whatever they considered him to be. Average? Handsome? Not completely hideous, at least. From the joke, they'd assumed.

No, he knew that was how other people took it, but that was never what it meant to him. 

In life, he had never identified much with his body. There was nothing particularly _wrong_ with it. He didn't dislike it, he didn't wish it was something else. All he'd really known was that associating his visage with the radio had felt correct on some inexplicable, perhaps spiritual level. He hadn't quite put that connection together for himself until he'd gone to Hell and all that had been left of him _was_ the spiritual.

Since the twenties, he had known people who nowadays he supposed would be called... the word he'd most recently heard was "transsexual," goodness knew whether it was still up-to-date—and he'd occasionally heard such folks long for bodies to match their minds—so he'd known such longings were possible, and he'd wondered from time to time whether they applied to him.

They didn't. He was quite confident that he did not want breasts, and he wanted a hole between his legs even less.

But did it say something, he had to wonder, that when he contemplated his own detachment from his body, he found himself curiously drawn to the words of people who had such specific, measurable objections to theirs?

When he thought about it, he wasn't terribly attached to the concept of manhood either, but he certainly preferred wearing the anatomy most people associated with the concept. And it came with its social advantages. Overall, he supposed he was perfectly content with his God-given equipment and the shape of the body it was all attached to. He simply didn't _identify_ with that body. It was an automaton to carry around his voice, one that did its job admirably well but needed constant, tedious upkeep. It was functional. It was a tool.

But it wasn't a part of his identity. Eyes to see and a mouth to produce sound, none of that represented _himself_. Rather, he'd always thought of himself as the face of radio. Or thought of the radio as his face. Either. Both.

Death had been a revelation. Plummeting to Hell had been rapturous. With death he had at last become the thing he had always felt he was: nothing but the voice that emerged from the radio.

###

Alastor tended to only visit a doctor once every couple of decades or so, and then only if something felt so weird that even his magic couldn't simply force it back into working order. One of his visits happened to be in the early eighties.

Alastor thought it was going pretty well.

The doctor jerked the stethoscope back from Alastor's chest so fast he almost dropped it. He scrambled to catch the stethoscope, jerked the earpieces out of his ears, and then pointed fearfully at Alastor's chest. "What the _sweet fuck_ was that?!"

"My lungs!"

"No-ho-ho they _ain't_."

"They always sound like that," Alastor said helpfully as he buttoned his shirt back up.

The doctor gaped at him.

Yes, this doctor's appointment was going just swimmingly.

After the doctor recovered from his horror, he performed a few more (increasingly uncomfortable) examinations and asked Alastor a few questions about his habits and diet, and finally declared, "Okay, so between the weird bruises and the bleeding gums, I'm ninety-nine percent sure you've got scurvy."

"Huh," Alastor said, surprised. "Is this because...?"

"Because you haven't eaten anything but human flesh for the last three months?" the doctor finished. "Yeah. Definitely. That's definitely it."

" _Huh,_ " Alastor said again. "So. Oranges?"

"Oranges," the doctor agreed. "Or lemons, grapefruit... kiwis, broccoli, strawberries, bell peppers... it's actually pretty hard to miss vitamin C completely."

"Ah! Bell peppers!" Alastor's eyes brightened. "That will be easy enough. I cook with them all the time."

The doctor gave him a flat look. "When you're not—?"

"When I'm not eating human flesh for months straight, yes."

"Great!" The doctor nodded. "Or just—get some vitamin pills. It's faster."

"Sure!" said Alastor, with absolutely no intent to do that.

"Okay, as long as you're in here, let's make sure you don't have anything else going on that's going to send you to an emergency room in a week," the doctors said. "Aside from the scars that opened back up due to the scurvy—got any untreated injuries?"

"Not that I've been told."

The doctor gave Alastor an odd look before rightly concluding that he'd been joking. "When's the last time you had your blood work done?"

"What for?"

"We'll get your blood done," the doctor said. "Had an STD test in the last six months?"

"I'm clean."

The doctor rolled his eyes, clearly far too used to hearing that. "I didn't ask if you're clean, I ask if you've been _tested_ in the last six months."

"I haven't done anything to be tested _for_ in the last six months."

That got the doctor's attention. "Past _year?_ "

"No."

The doctor tisked. "Pity. Say, there's a brothel around the corner whose girls are pretty clean, they have me come by monthly for checkups—"

Alastor fought back a grimace. "Not interested."

"I said 'girls'—it's not just girls, they cater to all tastes—"

"I'm not interested in the _act,_ doctor."

The doctor gave him a long, surprised look. "Really." And then slowly picked his clipboard and pen up. "How long's that been going on?"

Was not being interested a medical issue now? Since when? It hadn't been in—when had Alastor last gone to the doctor?—in the sixties... "Hm. How long... What day is it, doctor?"

"Er, Thursday."

"In that case, since I was born."

"Huh!" Based on how eagerly the doctor was taking notes, apparently that convinced him there was _more_ of a problem, not less. "Have you experienced any erectile dysfunction?"

"Any what-a-what, now?"

"Does your dick get hard."

"Ah! Unfortunately, yes."

The doctor's eyebrows went up and he mouthed the word _unfortunately_ to himself. He made another note, then asked, "Have you had any negative experiences with sexual activity?"

"Does this discussion count?"

"Er—no."

"Then no. Sorry, what's this interrogation for?"

The doctor picked up on the irritated edge to Alastor's voice; he flinched back slightly, holding up the clipboard as if to ward off the Radio Demon. "Just... trying to figure out whether your lack of interest is psychological or physiological. That affects possible treatments—"

"'Treatments'?"

The doctor flinched again. "For the inhibited sexual desire you're describing?"

Inhibited? Inhibited?! What about a man who'd eaten nothing but human flesh for the last three months said "inhibited"? Coldly, Alastor said, "So, let me get this straight. You're going to go look for a treatment to make me as eager to have sex as the next Joe Blow on the street?"

The doctor looked relieved. "Yes! Yes, exactly."

"I see. Got it," Alastor said. "Why in Hell would I want that?"

The doctor opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. Finally, flummoxed, he said, "Why, uh, wh—Why _wouldn't_ you?"

"It seems to take up a lot of time, doesn't it?" Alastor asked. "Doing it, seeking it, thinking about it, cleaning up from the messes..."

The doctor processed this. He said, "But—why _wouldn't_ you?"

Well, if the doctor was going to repeat himself, then so was Alastor. Patiently, he asked, "Why _would_ I?"

The doctor blinked heavily. Finally, he said, "Because then you can have sex?"

"I can already have sex!" Alastor said. "But I don't want to. That's—that's kind of the crux of this, you see. My _not wanting_ to."

"In your romantic relationships, your partner's going to expect..."

"I don't want one of those, either."

The doctor took a moment to process this. "But—you're not doing yourself any favors walking around with your sexual desire inhibited like that! Just psychologically speaking, you're—" The doctor cut himself off with a squeak as the shadows hiding from the fluorescent lights beneath the furniture and cabinets began crawling out.

"Call me 'inhibited' again and I'll _show_ you the difference between not wanting sex and not being able to have sex."

The doctor pulled his feet off the floor. "Okay! All right! Clean bill of health! Except the scurvy."

"Thank you!" Alastor pulled his coat back on and headed for the door. "Do me a favor and keep this _out_ of my medical file, would you? I'm not interested in repeating this discussion the next time I need a prescription." Nor in being pathologized simply for lacking interest in most of Hell's favorite hobby. Every year that went by, it seemed, the living found more and more ludicrous ideas to latch onto and gradually export to the afterlife. No doubt this was yet another one. They got stupider by the year, too...

Alastor shut the exam room's door a bit harder than was necessary.

###

Alastor wasn't wholly indifferent to the topic of amorous relationships, whether physical or emotional. It was just that he was only interested in them when they were _topics_. Subjects of conversation. Titillating gossip about the ghastly and scandalizing things people would do when driven by instincts that so many people seemed to act like they were helpless but to obey. The bafflingly overwrought emotional dramas of his friends and colleagues, whom he usually felt like were making mountains out of molehills and who constantly drove him to fight back the urge to say things like "why do you even bother?" or "I don't see why you don't just kick him to the curb," which most people didn't seem to find helpful. Even the most obscene erotic discussions in Hell—the sort that Alastor had no doubt must have been happening _somewhere_ in the living world while he was alive, but that certainly only happened in private because eavesdroppers might try to get the conversationalists arrested on principle—Alastor could sit through them with nothing but an eyebrow quirked in curiosity and the occasional blink of surprise.

Because these things didn't touch him. He was an outside observer, an audience, taking in the tumult troubling other people's lives as another form of entertainment. He was comfortable until he was invited in as a participant—at which point he politely bowed out of the discussion.

Among the songs on the private radio station in his head, along with a multitude of love songs that he thought were musically brilliant, lyrically clever, or narratively intriguing, there were the ones that he actually related to—like "The Gentleman Obviously Doesn't Believe (In Love)" or "I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jelly Roll" (which he was sorely disappointed people today didn't get; apparently "jelly roll" had fallen out of favor as a euphemism). But the ones he related to were low on his list of personal favorites. They _were_ relatable, yes, comprehensible, familiar—and therefore boring. Love was the exotic, dramatic, hallucinogenic drug, and therefore far better entertainment than things he already understood.

But more than love songs or sultry gossip or brokenhearted confessions or the juicy stories of those who tended to kiss and tell, he got his fix of love-inspired entertainment from fiction. Stories of villains thwarted, allies betrayed, virtues enforced or vices indulged—all in the name of claiming a heart and/or sharing a bed. It was true that there was no better entertainment than the drama of actual people's actual lives—truth is stranger than fiction, as they said—but it was also so much more sporadic. Even the sorts of friends (and Alastor _cherished_ such friends) who seemed to be constantly crying over some new, horrible match had dry spells.

But fiction was _always_ there. Radio dramas, stage plays, musicals, picture films... even comics.

Sometimes _especially_ comics.

###

"Sorry," Angel said. "Sorry, hold on. You collected _Tijuana Bibles?_ "

"Yes!" Alastor said. Angel had just expressed disbelief that Alastor _never_ consumed any sort of porn, and now he was expressing disbelief that he had?

Angel slowly pushed aside the basket of DVDs. "We're not talking, like, actual Bibles printed in Tijuana, are we? Because that _does_ seems like the kind of weird shit you would collect."

"No," Alastor said. "No, we are not talking about actual Bibles."

Grinning, Angel said, "You? _Really?_ Buyin' comics for a quarter about Donald Duck railing Minnie Mouse's ass?"

Alastor stared blankly at Angel.

"What?"

"Who's Donald Duck?"

Angel stared at Alastor.

###

The benefit of comics was that they were one more step removed from reality. In terms of pornographic materials, Alastor had seen, in order from most to least real: actual naked bodies, more actual naked bodies (but dead this time), films, sculptures, realistic paintings, detailed drawings, moderately realistic comic strips, and utterly cartoony comics. The farther the body was removed from a real person, the more Alastor's discomfort decreased and fascination increased.

If the bodies were far enough removed from humanity, Alastor could even feel something that approximated desire.

When he'd wryly stated that the only individuals on his "list" were either God or the Devil—when he'd considered listing a gorgon or a mermaid or a terror beyond mortal comprehension—it hadn't quite been entirely out of resignation. Alastor had been introduced to demonology during the war while stationed in France; he'd picked up a fat book called the "Infernal Dictionary" in a used book shop before returning to the States. Most of the illustrations found in the book were of normal humans who'd tangled themselves in hellish affairs, but the descriptions and illustrations of horned, hooved, clawed entities...

Although Alastor didn't have the same desires of most other people, he still (to his irritation) had the libido of one. He dealt with his physical needs with one hand as they came up and never once wanted anything more than that; but when he did deal with his needs, it was with a pulp pamphlet telling the story of some filthy depravity held open against his dictionary next to the illustration of one demon or another, superimposing the monster into the narrative.

Not out of desire. Not longing.

Entertainment.

For much of his life, Alastor had wondered if on some unconscious level he _did_ secretly yearn for the touch of other bodies just like any other human did; it was simply that some quirk in him had made him desire only the bodies of monsters unseen on the mortal plane. (He had started wondering this around the time he'd picked up murder as a hobby and had neutrally accepted that _he_ was a monster.) If so, then the reason he wasn't attracted to anybody was because nobody met his standards, right? Not because he didn't _feel_ attraction.

Then he arrived in Hell.

He received the horns, hooves, and claws he'd admired in his dictionary's illustrations.

And every street corner was packed with the sort of creatures he'd once kept in the corners of his eyes as he took care of his needs. The demons that the occult texts he'd consumed had taken time to name—the nobles, the princes, the powerful ones—were present in the flesh, looking like they'd walked straight out of their illustrations, all chitin and keratin and scales and feathers and fur.

If his theory had been right, arriving in Hell should have been what finally ignited Alastor's long-latent desires. Instead, he discovered he did not have the slightest desire to touch any of the demons around him. They were just as unappealing as the living had been.

He realized that the appeal behind the illustrations of inhuman unreal entities he'd used to deal with his libido in life was not that they were _inhuman_ , but that they were _unreal_. In death, once he'd _seen_ the demons whose illustrations he'd hungrily devoured, he couldn't touch himself even to other drawings of them. These demons were now separate people from him, they were now sentient, they were now real people walking around in the real world. The thought of pleasuring himself to the thought of someone who _existed_ turned his stomach; in his gut he felt like he was somehow violating both them and himself. He had no idea how other people managed to fantasize about other people without feeling sick.

So when he took care of his urges, what he thought about—if he thought about anything at all—continued to be only imaginary beings—monsters and mutants and beings the likes of which would drive men mad simply to witness them.

Anyway, Hell's equivalent of Tijuana Bibles were easier to get, half the cost, and much more fascinatingly twisted. He did just fine.

###

"So," Angel said, pointing at Alastor. "Cartoon porn addict."

"Wh—? _No._ "

"Ya _just said_ you can't get off to actual people, just toons."

This was what Alastor got. This was what he got for speaking frankly with someone. Accusations of cartoon porn addictions. "If I wasn't getting off to 'toons,' I wouldn't be getting off to _anything_. It's not a _substitute_ for actual people, it's—it's the closest I've ever had the _slightest interest_ in _getting_ to actual people. The art is all that appeals to me."

"Huh." Angel propped his chin in his hand, regarding Alastor like he was explaining some entirely new religion. Alastor supposed Angel's line of work probably didn't bring him around too many people who were completely disinterested in screwing. "Okay, that's a new one. Never saw a guy who got into hentai for some reason _other_ than the hardcore gangbang stuff being too soft for his tastes."

Alastor narrowed his eyes skeptically. "What's he—' _hen-tie_ '?"

Angel's face lit up. "Oh, oh shit. C'mon. We're going to the video store." He stood, snatching up his basket of DVDs. "I'll autograph a couple of these and swap them for some hentai. If cartoons are what you're into, I'm about to blow your mind."

Alastor hesitated, then stood and followed. Okay. He'd play along. Try everything once, right? It might be fun.

###

With every second that the subtitled film on the screen played, Alastor could feel his smile stretching wider into a taut grimace, his brows raising higher, and his eyes squinting like he was trying to keep them open while staring into the sun.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Angel grinning at him. He clearly considered Alastor's reaction far better entertainment than the filthy foreign film.

After another couple of moments of oddly mechanical-looking motions on the screen—like a piston cycling through its motions, but made out of flesh—Alastor managed to croak out, "It's... a conceptually ambitious plot line, isn't it?"

"Yeah, thought you'd like the tentacles," Angel said, in a casual tone that didn't at all match up with his expression of utter glee. "Seemed right up your alley."

Alastor's tentacles weren't going up _anyone's_ alley—or, if they were, they certainly weren't telling _him_ about it, and he didn't want to know. "But it's... It's kind of... weak on... characterization."

Angel snorted.

"And sound design." Alastor endured another couple of seconds of feminine moaning/shrieking, fleshy slapping, and what sounded like stirring macaroni. "The, uh—" He bit his lip, fighting back a tremble. "The... _squealing_ —it's a little much, isn't it."

"Is it?"

"Would you mind... You _can_ turn off the sound on this thing, can't you?"

"Yeah, sure." Angel picked up the remote and turned down the volume.

Alastor could immediately feel his tense shoulder muscles relax. Now that he didn't feel like a stranger was fingering herself an inch away from his ears, he could focus more fully on the film in front of him. It was _very_ thin on characterization. And demeaning. And he felt like there was probably going to be a drearily long sequence of rather repetitive tentacle-on-jelly-roll scenes before he found out whether or not the main character's unusual tactic was _actually_ going to help her avert this extraterrestrial invasion and protect her home town.

Angel asked, "So exactly how bad do the sound effects have to be before the _Radio Demon_ doesn't wanna hear them?"

Alastor opened his mouth to try to answer.

Instead he doubled over, cradling his face in his hand, and let out a laugh so high-pitched and wheezy it was inaudible beneath the whine of microphone feedback. "This—this is the—stupidest thing I've ever seen." He waved vaguely toward the screen. "Look at her _face_."

He didn't stop laughing over the absurdity of this animation or that plot point or those subbed lines for the remainder of the film.

It was, hands down, the most hysterically funniest thing he'd ever watched. He hoped to never watch another.

###

In life, when asked—and he was almost never asked—Alastor would have called himself a "confirmed bachelor." (A term that, he was given to understand, had picked up derogatory implications in the years since his death—but in his own life it had only meant what it sounded like.)

When he didn't call himself a confirmed bachelor, he called himself an enigma—that was funny, wasn't it, calling _oneself_ an enigma, putting on a mask of faux mysteriousness—because what it was that could make his heart pound and his loins stir was as much a mystery to him as it was to anyone else.

But usually, he didn't call himself anything.

In death, on the rare occasions that he curiously broached the subject of his absent desires, new terms were flung around at him. Category X. Inhibited sexual desire. Later on, Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder. The simple descriptor "low libido." He accepted these opinions with mild, bland interest. He accepted them as _opinions_ , subjective and saying more about the person who said them than they did about Alastor. Some of them might have been true descriptors of something going on inside his body or head. If so, he didn't care. He felt fine. He was content with who he was. And if some random paragraph in an obscure doctor's manual said that he was abnormal-in-the-bad-way? He found he didn't particularly care.

But he was sort of judging them for judging him.

###

The college student glanced up as the classroom door opened. "Hey. You here for the—?" And then she started. "Fucking shit."

"The study? Yes! It's been over sixty years since I last did something like this." Alastor took a seat across the table from the student. "I saw your flier." He slapped it down on the table. "Interesting advertisement." The flier read:

_"I was identified as a woman or man when I was born due to my anatomy, have both physically and mentally identified myself the same way ever since, and have felt both romantic and sexual desire for and ONLY for either men (if I am a woman) or women (if I am a man) on a regular basis for my entire existence." Does this sentence NOT describe you? We want to talk to you for a historical study! 15-20 minute interview. Participants will receive pizza._

The student regarded Alastor warily for a moment, and then reached across the table and slid the flier over to herself. "Yeah, holy shit, we spent like an hour writing that sentence," she said. "You wouldn't believe how hard it is to track down old queer people when they died before 'queer' meant queer. You can't use _any_ modern terminology—or else the genderfluid demi-aro lesbian that died in 1605 or whatever is gonna look at that exact list of words and go 'oh, that's not me.'" She threw up her hands in exasperation.

Alastor had just _heard_ that exact list of words and only knew what the last one meant. Although he _was_ vaguely aware of what "queer" meant these days—mainly that it no longer had anything to do with counterfeit money. "Well! I'm not quite sure if I fit the bill, but," he gestured vaguely at the student, "I'll leave that to you to decide. You know what you're looking for."

She pointed at the flier. "The sentence doesn't describe you, right?"

" _Technically_." But he'd been fairly certain when he'd seen the flier, and was even more certain now, that they had cast their net so wide with the flier because they were looking for any and all possible variations on gentlemen who were attracted to gentlemen and ladies who were attracted to ladies—and that Alastor himself had only accidentally been caught in the net because of how widely it was cast. "I don't feel _any_ desire for _anyone_ , you see, women _or_ men—"

"Asexual," the student said, with a firm nod.

Alastor hesitated. "Sorry? A sexual what?"

"One word. Asexual. Like not-sexual. You haven't heard of asexuality?"

"No." And he wasn't sure how keen he was on it. He had the sneaking suspicion that it was going to be the latest evolution in the whole "inhibited sexual desire" nonsense he'd been viewing askance for the last near-forty years.

"Yeah. If you don't feel sexual desire for other people—or romantic?"

"Or romantic." He'd never really thought of those as separate things before. Only in fiction, where the sexual half of it was often left out for decency's sake.

"Asexual _and_ aromantic," the student said. "Yeah, we've got a—we don't have an aromanticism pamphlet yet, but we've got an asexuality one in that stand in the lobby. It's purple." She opened a three-ring binder and started riffling through pages, muttering, "Hold on, we've got different questionnaires. Haven't had to pull out a..." She trailed off, mumbling to herself.

"' _Aromantic._ '" Alastor scoffed. "That sounds like it ought to be a label on a perfume bottle."

The student gave him a dead-eyed look. Kids these days.

"So, you've been interviewing other people who have the same thing?" And they even had separate forms. That was a step up from "category X," wasn't it.

"'Have'?" The student's mouth twisted. She half closed the binder. "You can't 'have' asexuality. It's not a disease, dude."

Dryly, Alastor said, "Isn't it? _That's_ a refreshing change."

"What, did they tell you it was while you were alive?" She swore to herself and redoubled her search through the binder. "Wait, that's one of the questions I'm supposed to be filling out, hold on."

Alastor decided not to hold on; his distaste for silence when he could be talking was greater than his concern for whether or not she copied down the interview material she wanted. "No, it wasn't—not until after I died. In fact, my preference to remain unattached was hardly ever commented on. Except by my mother, who would have been _delighted_ to see some young lady get a handcuff around my ring finger." A disembodied pipe organ played the first couple measures of Wagner's "Wedding March," before being cut off by a crash of discordant noises as if somebody had slammed the phantasmal organist's head into the organ keys. "It didn't happen. I eventually reassured her that I had more than enough friends to save me from dying alone. That was her only real concern."

The student had grabbed a random page from her binder and started taking notes on Alastor's comments on the back. She paused, glancing up. " _Really?_ You had _friends?_ "

"Amazing, isn't it! It's astonishing how easy it is to get along with people when they haven't seen hundreds of warning posters telling them not to talk to you."

"S'fair." She took another note, resumed flipping through her binder in search of the right forms, and said, "So, how _did_ you refer to yourself? Like—what terminology did you have in your time for not being interested in anyone?"

"I didn't have a term. I didn't _need_ a term." He'd done fine for himself all these years by explaining his preferences to people as "Not interested." When necessary, tacking on a "Go away." Postmortem, with the added option of ominous red symbols.

And what sense did it make, really, to come up with a term to define the lack of an interest? People who participated in music were musicians, people who participated in theater were actors, people who participated in sports were athletes—but there weren't words for people who _weren't_ interested in participating in music, in theater, in sports. He'd never thought to claim a term for not being interested in participating in love.

It seemed to him that the only need for a term like that came if the lack of interest was being treated as a _problem_ , and he was very wary of that.

So these new terms— _asexual, aromantic_ —well, they might be useful for these modern college students and their little studies, but they seemed to Alastor like another "category X." He doubted he'd have any more use for _these_ terms than he had for any he'd heard before—

"Here we go," the student muttered, pulling out a couple pieces of paper and quickly scribbling "none" under the terminology questions. "Of course the fuckin' ace and aro forms are at the front, we alphabetized this shit, why was I looking in the T's—

"Hold on," Alastor said. "The _what-a-what_ forms?

The student blinked. "Ace and aro?" she said. "Short for asexual and aromantic?"

Alastor's eyes lit up in delight.

###

He grabbed a purple pamphlet on the way out.

###

Husk fidgeted with the front of his vest to try to stop his chest fur from poking out between the buttons, then asked, "How come _you_ don't have to dress up when the rest of us do?"

"I _am_ dressed up," Alastor insisted.

Husk looked him up and down dubiously. "Can't you at least switch out your bow tie for a regular tie? It'd make you look less like some kinda circus ringleader."

"No. I like my bow tie," Alastor said. "Besides! We're _supposed_ to go together!" Before Husk could ask _what_ was supposed to go together (because he probably wouldn't, spoilsport), Alastor delivered his own punchline: "Bows and aros! Can't have one without the other!"

Husk gave him a confused look. "Uhhh... sure. Whatever."

He didn't have to get it. _Alastor_ knew he was funny. Alastor beamed.

###

As the dust and splinters from the collapsing floorboards settled, Alastor saw Niffty and Angel peering down at him from the basement floor. Niffty yelled, "Are you okay?!"

"Fine, my dear!" Alastor shifted, looking around himself at the pit in the ground that had opened up beneath the hotel. Well, _that_ wasn't a promising sign for the building's foundation, _was_ it?

"You break anything?" Angel called.

"No, no." He tried to stand, lost his footing on the pit's sloped dirt sides, and fell back down. "You know," he said, "I always knew I was going to be this ridiculous hotel's ace in the hole—I just didn't think it was going to be so _literal_."

There was a pause as Niffty and Angel processed that. "I think you hit your head," Niffty said.

"We're gonna find some, uh, rope or something, I dunno," Angel said.

Alastor sighed.

###

"Don't be absurd!" Alastor scolded Vaggie. "You want to fill your rooms, I'm offering you a way to fill them! The fastest, easiest way you could imagine! I'm even offering to do all the work myself. I can singlehandedly _streamline_ your hotel's recruitment process—why, you might even say I'm making it _aro-dynamic_!" His invisible audience laughed at his own joke.

Vaggie was unmoved. "I don't care how efficient you think it is," she said. "You are _not_ filling the hotel by kidnapping people and locking them in our rooms."

Alastor shrugged. "Fine! Run things your way! It's your loss."

Vaggie rolled her eye at him.

###

"If this doesn't go well," Charlie babbled, pacing back and forth in the lobby, "I don't know what I'm going to do. We are _this close_ to being old news. If I can't drum up interest in the hotel this time, we might never get another chance. Sure, we can still try to recruit people one by one, but that's so _slow_ , and if we want to get enough sinners redeemed before the next extermination—"

"My dear, you need to _relax!_ " Alastor put a hand on her head to stop her pacing. Once she stopped, he patted her head. "You don't have anything to worry about! No matter how this goes, it can't _possibly_ be as big a fiasco as your _first_ attempt at advertising."

Charlie grimaced. "That's... not actually that reassuring."

"It should be!" Alastor pulled Charlie's suit jacket off the coat rack by the door to offer to her; but before he did, he slid an arm up one of the coat's sleeves and waved his fingers at her. "Besides, _this_ time you've got an ace up your sleeve, don't you?" He winked, pulled off the jacket, and offered it to Charlie.

"I guess." She took the jacket and shrugged it on. "I know it doesn't make a difference to you, but I really do appreciate your help with—" She froze, one and a half sleeves on, staring at Alastor. "Wait. Al. Are you _ace?_ "

A bell dinged several times.

Charlie squeezed her hands together. "Really?!"

"My whole life," Alastor said. 

Charlie squealed. "That's purple!" She flung her arms around Alastor. "I can't believe it! The hotel's barely been open and I've already almost collected the whole rainbow!"

Alastor quickly peeled her off, wondered what in the world she was talking about, figured the "rainbow" had to be some reference to her little "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow" ditty, and uncomfortably asked, "Did I just accidentally make this hotel a success?"

###

Vaggie later explained the rainbow flag in question, and that the different colors did not, in fact, stand for different orientations; but Charlie refused to give the idea up.

She also informed Alastor that he not only had a flag of his own, but _two_ flags.

He hated the colors.

###

"One question, if I can trouble you from your business." Alastor was pleased to have stalked Lucifer to a narrow empty street this time, rather than being the one cornered. "It seems to me that you're the man I want to talk to if I'd like to know a little bit more about the structure of souls."

"Yes?" Lucifer fixed his full attention on Alastor.

"The first time we spoke, you told me that carnal desire is something... stitched into the essence of a soul, or something of the sort, didn't you?" It had been quite a few years. "So, by that measure, what do you make of a soul that doesn't have any?"

"Hmm." Lucifer looked Alastor up and down. "You're asking me whether your soul's got a hole where a missing piece is supposed to be?"

"I'm asking you whether _you_ think there's a hole in it." Alastor already had his own, very firm thoughts—and he sure didn't feel like he had any absent pieces. He never, ever had.

But by now he had met enough fools that felt otherwise that he wondered what the _first_ person who'd spoken with him about his nonexistent desires thought. Besides, Alastor was always curious how he came across to other people. It was the performer in him, he supposed.

Lucifer contemplated the question a moment. Then, finally, he said, "You're a pair of pants without back pockets."

Alastor blinked at Lucifer, smiling blankly. "I beg your pardon?"

"Most pants these days are made with back pockets cut into them, aren't they?" Lucifer asked. To Alastor's surprise, Lucifer spun around on the heels of his boots, flipped his coattails to the side, and stuck his fingers in the slits for his back pockets. "If my pants were missing their pockets, you'd be looking at my underwear! But a functional pair of pants doesn't _need_ back pockets. The fabric cut to make you never had slits cut out for pockets to be added. That's all."

Alastor turned the metaphor over in his mind. Like the metaphor was a pair of pants tumbling in a washing machine. "Bit of a complicated way to say 'no, you don't have any holes,' isn't it?"

"Don't blame me, _you_ started talking about stitching essences onto souls." Lucifer shrugged, tilting his head. The creature coiled around his hat shifted to keep its balance, and for the first time Alastor noticed that perhaps it wasn't a pink snake, but a massive worm. A worm and an apple. How fitting. "So tell me! What would you have done if I'd said you _do_ have a missing piece?"

"I hadn't thought that far ahead. Maybe I'd have turned 'eliminate Hell's old management' from a hobby into a full-time job. I'm not that big on politics, but I don't like the thought of my local representative being _that_ wrong about me."

"Ahh, yes. I had ambitions like that." Lucifer cast a meaningful glance up toward Heaven, and then let it drift down to the skyline of Pentagram City. "I think they turned out well." He returned his gaze to Alastor. "You're kind of interesting for a mortal, you know. We don't get many down here who know themselves as well as you do."

"I may be a damned soul, but I'm certainly not a lost soul." The studio audience applauded appreciatively.

"Well put! I look forward to seeing what you'll be like when you figure yourself out the rest of the way."

Alastor blinked, puzzled. What did he still need to figure out? Or was Lucifer playing mind games with him again?

Before Alastor could decide how to fish for clarification, Lucifer tipped his hat in farewell. "It's always a pleasure, Radio Demon."

"The feeling's mutual, your majesty." When Lucifer wasn't threatening to do unpleasant things to Alastor in a dark alley just to make him nervous, at least. Alastor tipped his head in a half-bow for just a split second, and when he raised his head Lucifer was gone.

Alastor continued on his way, quietly humming along to an instrumental recording of "The Gentleman Obviously Doesn't Believe."

**Author's Note:**

> Historical footnotes!
> 
> \- "Category X": The first major study on sexual orientation was done by Alfred Kinsey through the [Kinsey Reports](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Reports), men in 1948 and women in 1953. It's suspected that many people he classified as "X" would identify as ace today. I headcanon that developments in the living world take 5-10 years to trickle into Hell, which is why Alastor takes part in Hell's equivalent of the Kinsey Reports in the 50s. The original Kinsey Reports were done via interviews, not a questionnaire, but the kids replicating the study in Hell simplified Kinsey's process. I paraphrased bits of [this quiz](http://vistriai.com/kinseyscaletest/) for this fic.
> 
> \- "inhibited sexual desire": In the 70s, "sexology" boomed, bringing the idea that sex is good and healthy—and the assumption that _not_ having sex is _un_ healthy. In '77 people with low/no sexual desire were first pathologized under the names "inhibited sexual desire" and "hypoactive sexual desire." These were combined into "Inhibited Sexual Desire" in 1980, and renamed "[Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoactive_sexual_desire_disorder)" in 1987. It wasn't until the DSM's 2013 update that self-identifying aces could avoid an HSDD diagnosis. The use of "inhibited" instead of "hypoactive" plugs the doctor's death date in the early 80s.
> 
> A lot of Alastor's experiences in this fic parallel ones I had while figuring out my orientation in the late '00s. As an undergrad majoring in psychology a professor told me that psychologists don't consider asexuality to simply be low libido; a couple years later while talking to a psychiatrist about my suspected asexuality, he told me most self-declared asexuals are just uncomfortable to face their own sexuality and I'm probably straight. I couldn't find direct ways to map those experiences onto Alastor, so I took these '00s-era instances of academic and psychiatric aphobia and looked for historical equivalents that Alastor _could_ have gone through.
> 
> \- "Let's All Be Fairies": song [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHTv7GK1Qss), lyrics [here](https://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/l/letsallbefairies.html). At the time, this was part of a wave of pro-gay songs in the 1920s; today, it's kinda cringy for relying on effeminate stereotypes.
> 
> \- "Pirates of Penzance": Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas in the late 1800s were a precursor to modern musicals. [The song Alastor sings](https://youtu.be/FXf0o2d-W5w?t=128), lyrics in the captions.
> 
> \- "bell peppers": bell peppers are actually higher in vitamin C than citrus—making them pretty good for battling scurvy—and are one third of the "holy trinity" of veggies (with celery and onions) that form the basis of a lot of Cajun and Creole dishes, meaning Alastor's a big fan of them.
> 
> \- "The Gentleman Obviously Doesn't Believe (In Love)": [Song here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDCN5ygwkeA). (I can't find any lyrics transcribed, so here's a [second version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up2-9nFbWbI) from the 50s w/ clearer sound to help hear the lyrics more easily.) I have decided that this is an ace song because I want to.
> 
> \- "I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jelly Roll": [Song here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqp3zMpDJ6A), lyrics in the comments. (There are variations with slightly different lyrics, including ones for male singers.) "Jelly roll" is a turn-of-the-20th-century euphemism for vagina—or, by extension, genitalia in general. I have also decided that this is an ace song because I want to.
> 
> \- "Tijuana Bibles": cheap tiny pure PWP smut comics (much of it fanart) produced starting in the 20s. See [here](http://tijuanabibles.org/bibles/) or [here](http://www.tijuanabible.org/comiclibrary/tijuana-bible-of-the-month-list.htm). Watch out for old-school racism, sexism, and really boring dialogue.
> 
> \- "Who's Donald Duck?": Donald Duck was introduced into Disney's cartoons in 1934, and the greatest tragedy of Alastor's life is that he never saw Donald.
> 
> \- "Infernal Dictionary": Check out this [fat fuckin book](https://archive.org/details/DictionnaireInfernal1863/mode/2up) with all this demonology in French. I headcanon the _Dictionnaire Infernal_ as a key piece in Alastor's intro to the occult.
> 
> Fic posts! On [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/624640924484550656/youve-got-a-face-for-radio) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/ckret2/status/1287102074627522560?s=20). Comments/reblogs there are highly appreciated (as are comments here)!


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